[00:00:00] Speaker A: This show is a part of the FM Podcast network, the home of great music podcasts.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: Visit
[email protected] you are listening to the Dylan Taunts podcast.
[00:00:25] Speaker A: All right, welcome to another episode of what is it about Bob Dylan? I am your sometimes host, Aaron Callahan, and I'm joined this evening with the esteemed and acclaimed filmmaker Michael Glover Smith. Welcome, Michael.
[00:00:39] Speaker B: Thank you so much for having me, Aaron. And I'm especially excited to be talking to you today, less than 24 hours since I saw a Bob Dylan show, so he is very fresh on my mind.
[00:00:54] Speaker A: I need to know more about that. But let me introduce you first. So Michael wrote and directed feature films, or the feature films cool, Apocalypse, Mercury in Retrograde, rendezvous in Chicago, and relative, all of which won awards at festivals across the US and were the subject of rave reviews. The New York Sun Times Richard Ripper wrote that, quote, smith has a deft touch for creating characters who look and sound like people we know. And Roger Ebert Com's Matt Fagerholm has called him, quote, one of the Windy City's finest filmmakers, end quote. That's fantastic.
[00:01:35] Speaker B: Okay, you can stop there.
[00:01:37] Speaker A: I can stop there. All right. I do want to say that you teach directing at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, and you are the author of Flickering Empire, published by Columbia University Press in 2015. And that is an acclaimed nonfiction book about film production in Chicago during the silent era. And he is graciously going to come talk with my lit and film class later this semester. So I am very appreciative and my students are excited about that. So welcome again, Michael.
[00:02:04] Speaker B: Well, thank you so much. The only two kind of podcasts I've ever appeared on are filmmaking podcasts and Bob Dylan podcasts.
[00:02:14] Speaker A: Those are the best.
[00:02:16] Speaker B: You know, I'm excited to talk about both of those things with you.
[00:02:20] Speaker A: I'm so excited to talk with you to kind of merge those interests. And I thought, what a wonderful opportunity we have, or at least for me, to learn more about Bob's film ventures from someone who is so acclaimed and who actually is doing the work in film. So this is so exciting for me. So let's start with our question. What is it about Bob Dylan?
[00:02:45] Speaker B: I love that you start off with such a big, general.
[00:02:51] Speaker A: Mean.
[00:02:52] Speaker B: Like anyone will tell you he's the greatest singer songwriter of all time. I mean, his body of work is unparalleled. But what it is about Bob Dylan, for me personally, the reason why I am still a fan after having listened to him for 35 years, the reason why he still has his hooks in me is because I am primarily interested in him as a live performer.
Yes, I was really lucky. I mean, I saw my first show back in 1989, which was right after my 14th birthday, summer of 89, Tony Garnier's first tour, and throughout the saw a lot of live music. I'm a big fan of music and art and culture, so I saw a lot of other live shows, people who are Dylan's contemporaries, like Paul Simon, Paul McCartney, Neil Young, James Taylor, and so on and so forth. But I also listened to a lot of new music. So I went to lollapalooza 92, 93 and 94. So I saw all of those alternative rock groups. I saw a lot of hip hop groups as well.
But there was something about Dylan that just kind of. He kind of rose to the top of the pack for me because I kind of instinctively grasped early on that he was the most spontaneous of all of those live performers that I saw, especially his vocal approach. The way he chooses to phrase the lyric is completely in the moment. It's how he wants to do it at that moment based on how he's feeling. This is also true of how he plays the guitar, the piano, the harmonica. And there's something just exhilarating about that when you're at a live show and you know, it's unique, it's unrepeatable. It's different from how he did it the night before, even if it's the same song.
[00:05:09] Speaker A: Right.
[00:05:11] Speaker B: And so that is what has kept me coming back. It's like I've kind of been in correspondence with his body of work. It's been a constant companion to me. And the final thing I want to say before you move on to your.
[00:05:31] Speaker A: Next question is, or I might have a follow up.
[00:05:35] Speaker B: Oh, that works, too.
Our friend Elizabeth Cantalamesa just recently wrote this beautiful essay about.
[00:05:44] Speaker A: So good.
[00:05:45] Speaker B: It's so good. Her blog is called Secondhand thoughts. Everyone who is a Dylan head needs to subscribe.
She wrote this essay about how going to the rough and rowdy ways shows in particular is like going to secular church. And there's a ritualistic aspect to the shows. So for me, a big part of that ritual is attending it with people who also get it, who get what he's doing. Because he's not for everybody. No, but when someone is as attuned as you are to the nuances of how he's singing, I frequently laugh when I see Dylan in concert because I'm so delighted by what he's doing.
Or I'll be with a friend who I will grab, I'll grab their shoulder because something really exciting will happen or they will grab me. And so that sort of camaraderie is really, you know, that was something you and I experienced in Washington, DC a couple years ago when we had that great pre show meetup that Molly Mullins organized and Laura Tenshirt was there and Anne Margaret Daniel. All these luminaries.
[00:07:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
And then we bumped into each other.
[00:07:16] Speaker B: In the airport, which was then, you know, we just kind of went through the same thing in.
[00:07:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:23] Speaker B: With these. Really great.
[00:07:24] Speaker A: You're so expressive when you. I was watching you because you are very tall, and so you stand out and you, in, in the fourth row that first night, and I could just.
That joy that was just radiating from you was so wonderful. And then after you said, you have to show Bob love, especially if you're that close, so lovely.
[00:07:48] Speaker B: Yeah. Because he can see you.
He does feed off the energy of the crowd. And I don't think it's a coincidence that the best of those three shows, in my opinion, was the Saturday night show. And I think it's because the audience was the most into it.
And so, anyway, to make a long story short, to me, the people who are there with me experiencing that joy, those are my fellow parishioners in the church. And so that camaraderie is something that I always look forward to feeling. But I should also point out that if people are not on, you know, I'm sympathetic to that, too, because I'm married to someone.
Know does not get it.
[00:08:36] Speaker A: I told Jim we should do a roundtable of spouses, of people who are Dylan heads, and just to hear their war stories of having to put up.
[00:08:47] Speaker B: With us, the long suffering significant others.
[00:08:53] Speaker A: Exactly. Just a one off to hear. That would be interesting, at least for us. Maybe.
[00:08:58] Speaker B: Oh, do it.
[00:08:59] Speaker A: I have said for a long time that there's something very spiritual that happens when I'm at a Dylan show. I mean, this is going back 20 or more years that I've always said it's like being at big church. I've said that. Or synagogue for our jewish friends, or temple, or wherever you worship, wherever you have those religious services. But I've said that for a long time. What was my follow up question? So you have just seen and how many times you've seen him? Four or five last night.
[00:09:34] Speaker B: Oh, this tour last night was my fourth show. And then I'll also be going to Evansville, which will be my fifth and final. Okay.
[00:09:42] Speaker A: All right. So cool. And so someone said to me, when I said I was going to see several in a row. Isn't it the same show? And I was like, it's never the same show.
[00:09:54] Speaker B: It's never the same show. Even when the songs are the same.
That's the thing that we realize that not everybody else does.
[00:10:03] Speaker A: So I think you kind of answered this, but the second question is always sort of like, you're a Bob Dylan superhero. What's your origin story? And you said that your first tour was 89 and you went to a lot of music, but what was the thing that, was it seeing him live that really hit you? Or was there an album that we were like, I got to see more of? I now need to go experience this.
[00:10:25] Speaker B: Well, if you want to go to the very.
I first. I have kind of an unusual origin story. I first heard Bob Dylan's voice when I saw the video for the traveling Willberry song, handle with care in 1988.
[00:10:43] Speaker A: That's awesome.
[00:10:45] Speaker B: Yeah, I know. And I had never heard him before, and I just remember watching that video and the part where he and Tom Petty sing together.
Everybody's got somebody to lean on. Put your body next to mine and dream on. That was my favorite part of the song. So I went out, I bought that album, traveling Wolverines, volume one, on cassette tape. And the Dylan songs were my favorite songs on there because his voice was the thing that grabbed me, more so than the lyrics, because I was 13. I didn't care about poetry. It was just a sense of humor and playfulness that I sensed in his personality through the voice. That's what appealed to me.
[00:11:33] Speaker A: You hadn't reached your angsty teens yet.
[00:11:35] Speaker B: To be into the country?
No, that was a couple of years later.
[00:11:40] Speaker A: All right, so you are, as I've said, an accomplished filmmaker, and I do want to focus on the films, the movies, and the videos that he's done, because I love a moment in tight connection to my heart where he's dancing, and I do really appreciate.
So, as a filmmaker, tell me what you think Dylan does well or that he gets right in his a.
[00:12:07] Speaker B: That's an excellent question. But first we have to define what you mean by his movies, because there are movies that he has directed, like eat the document and Ronaldo and Clara. Those are the two films where he is really credited as being the director. And then beyond that, he's acted in movies that he was not really involved in, beyond showing up to perform in front of a camera. And then there are other movies, concert films, or documentaries about him that were directed by other people.
But I think this is really an underexamined aspect of his career. And I'm actually a big fan of Ronaldo and Clara. I think it's a great film.
[00:12:56] Speaker A: Okay, let's talk about what you want to talk about, then.
[00:12:59] Speaker B: Okay, yeah, let's go. Let's go. I mean, as a director, I think Dylan's approach to cinema is very similar to his approach to songwriting.
It's a poetic approach, and I think the rules of songwriting have been broken down to the point where you can do anything in a song, just like you can do anything in a poem. Like, a poem doesn't have to rhyme. A song doesn't have to rhyme. But for whatever reason, I think because movies are a newer art form, relatively speaking, people won't accept abstraction in cinema the way that they will in a, you know, a film like Ronaldo and Clara is really an experimental film where it's like three different movies in one. He's combining a concert film that's one mode with a behind the scenes documentary, which know sort of, about what the Rolling Thunder review players are doing while on tour. And then he also combines that with fictional scenes where the same people, those same rolling Thunder players, are also playing characters and acting out sketches that are clearly improvised. So he's constantly cross cutting between these three different modes. And there's always a kind of logic in terms of why he's cutting from one shot to another or why he's going from one scene to another.
And it's really kind of intricate. He spent a lot of time editing that film, so there are certain visual motifs that you can kind of trace if you're watching the movie closely, where he'll be singing a song, he'll be singing Kalijah was a wooden indian, and then it'll cut to a shot of an indian head logo on the side of a truck. So it's like, things like that that will kind of take you, that will serve as bridges from one moment to, you know, he spent a lot of, you know, a famous story about Alan Ginsburg visiting him at home, and he had colored index cards where he had described what was happening on each scene, and he was using that as a way to kind of order and reorder the scenes. So Ronaldo and Clara is a major work to me, and it's something I know he really put his heart and soul into. He sacrificed an entire year of his career for the post production of that film. I mean, 1977. He did not tour, he did not make any new music because he was working on Ronaldo and Clara. And I think, unfortunately, he was know stung by the vicious criticism that that film received, which I think is part of the reason why he's never really officially directed anything since. But another reason is, I think if you look at Ronaldo and Clara and eat the document, Dylan really exerted control over those films in the editing stage.
[00:16:22] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:16:23] Speaker B: He wasn't even present for a lot of the filming of Ronaldo. And know that was like Howard alk and some other cinematographer when they're doing the hurricane on the street interviews. And I think Dylan just kind of looked at this mountain of footage, and he tried to figure out the way to organize it that would be the most effective. And it's highly personal, and in my opinion, it's extremely impressive the way he was able to put it all.
You know, the point I'm trying to make about him being so heavily involved in post production is I don't think Dylan likes to direct people, which is something that you have to do if you're a.
And actually, I was going to give a talk about this at the world of Bob Dylan conference because I actually submitted a proposal and it was accepted, and then I decided not to go.
But that was kind of the linchpin of my talk, was how, since Ronaldo and Clara, Dylan has continued to make movies, but he's looked for collaborators who could kind of do the hard work of directing, like Larry Charles, like Alma Harrell, who directed Shadow Kingdom, and even, I think you could say, martin Scorsese.
[00:17:47] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:17:50] Speaker B: Go ahead. What I want to say is there's an interview, and I was going to show this at the world of Bob Dylan conference. There's an interview he did in 1984 where he is being interviewed by Martha Quinn from MTV.
[00:18:05] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, I know that one. Go ahead.
[00:18:07] Speaker B: It's a great interview. And he complains about the Joker man interview, the Joker man video. He says he doesn't like it. And she says, well, why don't you direct your own video then? And he says, no, you have to tell too many people what to do.
And I think that that is actually a really illuminating quote, more so than it might appear on the surface, because what he's basically saying is, as a musician and as a band leader, he expects people to follow along.
He expects people to intuitively understand what he's doing and to follow along through nonverbal communication. But as a film director, you can't do that because there are so many people involved. There are so many moving parts. You have to learn to communicate very explicitly with your cast and your crew. What you expect of them. Otherwise, you're just going to end up wasting.
Know, Dylan's film career is fascinating because he loves movies.
His uncle owned the movie theater in Hibbing, Minnesota, where he grew up, and he watched films as a kid, and he's always wanted to make films. But I think what he learned during Ronaldo and Clara is that he's not really cut out for directing.
[00:19:32] Speaker A: But isn't that. It's interesting to me because I think that I do have a question about why you think people responded negatively. But I want to. That point you just made, he isn't allowed to fail a lot. I just talked with Craig Danieloff about this in context of the that he had never failed so consistently for such a long period of time. But when you take away that narrative of failure, he's actually working through his own process and trying to figure out his way forward. And I don't think that he's given the space in criticism and whether it's just journalism or criticism and the academy or even among his fans, to fail like that, as he's processing through something, and I found some really lovely quotes where he's more generous to his fans, saying, like, well, this stuff may not be for them, and that's okay.
He's more generous to them as he's going through that than they are to him. But I think the same kind of holds true of Ronaldo and Clara, that he tried something, and he was wildly creative, as you said, and people just. They lambast and they don't like it. And it did sting him. It definitely left a mark. But why do you think, a, people responded the way they did, and then, b, why don't people let him try things that don't work, that he's trying to express or further his own creativity?
[00:20:58] Speaker B: Well, I think because he is a musician, film is a completely different medium. So I think he's kind of seen as an interloper. Right.
I think that happens quite frequently where people just assume, oh, you thought it would be easy. You thought you could do it when you really don't have the background and the training.
The other thing is, Ronaldo and Clara is a true independent film.
He self financed that movie, and I think there's always a backlash against that.
It's like when chronicles came out that was widely embraced, even though he's working in a different medium. But he had Simon and know publishing that book, and he had their marketing muscle behind that. But with Ronaldo and Clara, not only did he finance it independently, he also self distributed it. And that, I think in the eyes of a lot of people, made it seem like it was just a know. It was like a lark on his.
[00:22:10] Speaker A: Part because there was no quote unquote legitimate studio or machine behind.
[00:22:17] Speaker B: Absolutely, absolutely. And the other thing, know I think Ronaldo, and know I hope it'll become available to watch through official channels because I guarantee you its reputation will go way up as soon as people can see it in good quality. That's the other thing, is like the only circulating copies as their origin. A vhs tape that someone made off of a british television broadcast in the 80s.
Yeah, it's like really fuzzy. The colors are washed out. You can't hear it that well. But then when you watch the Scorsese rolling Thunder review documentary, a lot of it is the same footage, but it's been scanned in four k and remastered. The colors are really vibrant and it looks beautiful. So if we can see and hear the whole movie in that quality, it's going to be a revelation for a lot of people.
[00:23:27] Speaker A: I agree. You know, they have all that at the archives. We just need them to, of course, let it come out.
[00:23:35] Speaker B: Let us.
[00:23:37] Speaker A: So you did mention his partnership with Scorsese. And I think that I realized this, and maybe you will contradict this, but when the Rolling Thunder review came out, because it does have that little hyphen, I realized how much fun he has with Scorsese and that he sort of found a partner who is equally a genius, know, accomplished in his own field, that he can play with and have fun with. And I don't know if you feel the same way.
[00:24:08] Speaker B: Oh, no, I totally do. I mean, that whole film, it's so much more playful than the no direction home documentary. Oh, yeah. And it's really because of the dialogue between Scorsese and know, a lot of heard. Scorsese kind of said, I haven't seen Bob Dylan. I haven't been in the same room as him in 20 years. And I think a lot of people sort of wrongly interpreted that as Scorsese was kind of hands off when it came to what Dylan did in those movies. But even if they weren't in the same.
It's. It's them collaborating with each other and having a hell of a lot of.
No, I was. I was just going to say, I think Dylan's best performance on camera is in Thunder review.
[00:25:09] Speaker A: Oh, absolutely.
[00:25:10] Speaker B: Everything he's saying is bullshit. And yet it sounds utterly believable. Much more believable. Know anything he says in Hearts of Fire or Pat Garrett and Billy the kid?
[00:25:22] Speaker A: In my opinion, all right, I do. And I love that little smirk he gives consistently. When did you know that it was bullshit? When did you know that he was putting you on in that?
[00:25:36] Speaker B: I learned about it in the best possible way, which was while I was watching it for the first time on the big screen in Chicago. They actually had a screening. I think it was like the day before it became available to watch on Netflix.
[00:25:51] Speaker A: We had ours at the Museum of Fine Arts.
[00:25:53] Speaker B: It was so nice. Yeah, we had ours at the Gene Sisko film Center here, and it was great. Heaven's door whiskey was there giving out know in the lobby. But no. At first I believed it all because I knew nothing about the film. And so I remember know while watching it. Wow. Sharon Stone was there. How did I not know that? That's so weird. And then I'm watching it, and I'm thinking about it while I'm watching it, and I'm like, wait a minute. Stefan Van Dorp. This makes no.
The. The original Rolling Thunder review was filmed by Dylan and the cinematographers he hired. There wasn't some.
Where is he from? Belgium, I think.
[00:26:41] Speaker A: Yeah. One of them.
[00:26:44] Speaker B: Some pretentious european art house director there.
But I still kind of believed it just because it seemed so authoritative. Right. It seemed so legit. But then I was thinking about the Sharon Stone thing, and I'm like, I would have known about this because I've been following expecting rain for decades. And she would have mentioned this in an interview, and I would have seen it somehow.
[00:27:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:15] Speaker B: And then eventually what happened is Michael Murphy shows up in that film, great character actor from the 1970s, and he's playing a character that he played on this HBO show directed by Robert Altman Tanner 88. So when he showed up as that character, that's when I realized, oh, this is all bullshit. Right. And then I thought it was hilarious. And then I couldn't wait to watch it again from the beginning with that knowledge.
[00:27:45] Speaker A: Why do you think people were mad at it?
I just want to say when the word split in the beginning, because I'm a lit person. And it went from Rolling Thunder Review to review, I was like, it's a reimagination.
[00:27:59] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:28:00] Speaker A: He's telling you right from the opening. And then they were talking about Nixon and the bicentennial.
[00:28:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:28:08] Speaker A: And I was like, nixon wasn't president during the bicentennial.
They're signaling. And then I started questioning them. But when it was the Sharon Stone thing, I was.
[00:28:26] Speaker B: You know, that's the trickster side of Dillo. Right. I think he always wants you to discover the joke or to discover the reference.
He just doesn't want to make it too obvious. It's like he wants you to do a little bit of digging and to kind of realize it. In retrospect, I think people were mad because people don't understand how filmmaking works.
I've heard a lot of people say, oh, well, instead of that footage, we could have seen more of him performing, or we could have seen interviews with people who are not in the film. But if that footage hadn't been there, it's not like the movie would have been the same length.
It is what it is. That's what Scorsese and Dylan wanted it to be.
And ultimately, those fictional segments, it probably doesn't amount to more than 15 or 20 minutes of the entire film, which is like 2 hours and 15 minutes long. So it's really not that big of a deal.
[00:29:38] Speaker A: But people made it a big deal. And I often thought, too, that maybe because PBS put out no direction home, and so there's an element of authenticity there and more seriousness. There's more gravitas to that. And this is Netflix, and so it's more playful.
[00:29:58] Speaker B: We're not used to documentaries lying to us. Right. I mean, it's like when Orson Wells did war of the worlds in 1938 on Halloween night. I mean, everyone believed it, which to us seems ridiculous, but nobody had ever used the medium of radio to perpetrate that kind of a hoax. And when you're watching a documentary and you're seeing talking heads interviews with real people who are clearly being interviewed, you're not used to seeing that seamlessly intercut with things that are deliberately fake.
[00:30:35] Speaker A: But to your own point, he does that in Ronaldo and Clara. It's the same technique.
[00:30:41] Speaker B: That's true. And people hated that movie even more.
[00:30:46] Speaker A: We may have cracked the was. Yeah, but, yeah, they hated Ronaldo and Clara, but they also were angry about watching what they considered a documentary that had elements of fiction.
[00:31:02] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. But they had no problems with no direction home.
[00:31:07] Speaker A: No.
[00:31:08] Speaker B: Right. Because that was the most conventional. That's the one that's the most similar to what they're already used to watching.
[00:31:14] Speaker A: And it just goes back to feeding people based on their.
They want to be spoon fed what they expect.
[00:31:23] Speaker B: And Dylan loves to confound expectations.
[00:31:27] Speaker A: Yeah, he.
So I often think of his songs as particularly visual, so I can see the movie in my mind. Do you agree with that?
[00:31:38] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:31:39] Speaker A: What songs are particularly visual and would translate well to screen? Like, if he came to you and said, michael, I want you to make a music video for me. Pick any song.
[00:31:51] Speaker B: Well, I don't know if I would necessarily pick the song that would be the most. Obviously.
Know a lot of his songs are really visual because they tell know Joey is a great story song. It's like watching a movie. Or know it's been pointed out that the opening lines of Hurricane resemble a know pistol shots ring out in the bar room night. Enter Patty Valentine from the upper hall. That sounds like either an action description in a screenplay or, like, stage directions. Right. This character enters the scene.
But you know what song I wanted there to be a video for? Because I saw it in my mind was I've made up my mind to give myself to you.
[00:32:52] Speaker A: Tell me about it. What did you imagine?
[00:32:55] Speaker B: Well, I imagined an animated video.
[00:32:59] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:33:00] Speaker B: Like a rotoscope animation.
And I think it's because of the opening lines, which I have become obsessed with, which are, I'm sitting on my terrace, lost in the stars listening to the sounds of the sad guitars.
Those lines, to me, paint an image in my mind that is very close to Van Gogh's starry night because that song is so abstract.
That song is all about feelings.
It's about pledging himself. It's a song about devotion. But it's so nonspecific for most of it that there's a lot of debate over what exactly he's singing about. People say, oh, is it a love song where he's singing about a person? Is he singing about God recommitting himself to God? Or is he thinking about his audience?
Of course it's about the audience. But I think what makes it work for me are those opening lines because they're so specific, they're so concrete in their detail as opposed to everything else. So I imagine the narrator of the song literally sitting on the terrace outside of his house at night beneath the starlit sky and looking up at the stars, perhaps smoking a cigar, listening to music.
And then it's almost like everything that happens after that is acceptable because of the way he sets the stage in those first two lines. And I think that's his good of an opening as he's ever done for any song.
And I have to give a shout out to Michael Gray who noted that the latin root word for terrace is terra, which means earth. And so it's all about the juxtaposition of the earth and the sky, right?
But to me, what really makes it work is the word lost. That is the masterstroke. Because so many other songwriters could have written something similar but I don't think anyone that Dylan would have said lost in the know. It's like a lot of other people would have said, looking at the stars or underneath the stars, but it's the fact that he's sitting on the terrace listening to music and he's lost in his contemplation of the cosmos and what's above. Right. And then that's what allows all the feelings to come in, everything else that he sings about. So, yeah, I'd love to do an animated video for that song.
[00:36:11] Speaker A: I say do to. I know I'm in the minority, but I like Sylvio.
[00:36:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:36:25] Speaker A: And I'm learning that more and more people like it.
But you said. Yeah, exuberantly, so that makes me feel better. But I do love that song. And I can see I have that video in my mind's eye always. But do you think he's been successful at making videos, his music videos, because that was something that he had to.
You don't?
[00:36:48] Speaker B: Okay, well, he's done a lot and.
Yeah, I don't know. Most of them are not good, in my opinion.
[00:36:57] Speaker A: Well, he says, paul Williams writes that Dylan hated Joker man.
[00:37:02] Speaker B: And I can understand why. It's too know, it's too literal and it's not even.
It's. There are so many images that don't even really correspond to what he's singing. See, you see the Joker from Batman, you see, you know, it's like George, Lois, this advertising guy, and Larry Slowman picked a bunch of images that to them, corresponded to the lyrics. But I think it looks kind of dated today and kind of embarrassing, to be honest with the Paul Schrader video for tight connection to my heart. I mean, it's a campy good time watching that powdered blue wig literally tumbled down a flight of steps as Dylan is singing about a powdered blue wig.
It's cringe inducing.
[00:38:01] Speaker A: It is. But in like the best 80s way.
[00:38:04] Speaker B: In the best 80s way. It's fun. I mean, I've watched it a million times, but, yeah, he's dancing. I mean, that's amazing.
I do think he's done some good videos. I think the best one is the video for Blood in my eyes from world.
Yeah. Which was directed by Dave Stewart. That was shot on 16 millimeter film, black and white. It's very elegant and simple.
He lip syncs in it very convincingly. And then it's just moving to see him walking around in know, wearing a top hat and interacting with people. You see him juggling at one point. Yeah, I think what I like about it is Dave Stewart just kept it simple. Like, he knows that Dylan is so compelling to watch that all you have to do is film, know that's all you have to do. Just like Dylan is fascinating to watch.
Hearts of fire, very bad movie, in my opinion. And Dylan's performance is not great. And yet he's also the thing that makes it so compelling because he doesn't sound like anyone else. He doesn't move like anyone else you've ever seen. So when he's not on screen, you're just know, bring that guy back. I want to look at him and listen to him again.
[00:39:38] Speaker A: That's brilliant. So I want to shift a little bit and talk about something that has kind of popped up in our little Dylan taunt circle. What do you think is Dylan's most overrated?
[00:39:51] Speaker B: Ooh.
I have an answer that will probably be a little controversial.
[00:39:58] Speaker A: Good.
[00:39:59] Speaker B: I'm going to say I could pick a number of early songs, but I'm going to pick my back pages.
[00:40:10] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:40:11] Speaker B: Which I think is a good song. But I think out of all of the good Dylan songs, that, to me, is one where it has the most clunky lines, the most awkward lines. And I'll tell you, I mean, everybody loves that song because of the refrain. I was so much older than. I'm younger than that now. Everybody hears that song and they can relate to it.
[00:40:38] Speaker A: Everyone can relate to the imagery. Crimson flames.
[00:40:44] Speaker B: The opening line is good. Crimson flames tied through my ears. Brilliant. Yeah. But I'll tell you a bad line from that song.
Okay, let me think. How does it go?
My existence led by confusion boats mutiny from stern to bout that is not good, Aaron.
[00:41:09] Speaker A: It's forced.
[00:41:11] Speaker B: It's forced. Yes. So here's the thing. I know how he wrote that. This is how I think he wrote that song. And I think you can say this about Gates of Eden and some of those other early songs where there's a cascade of imagery and there's a lot of words.
He was looking for rhymes for the word. Now, in the refrain, I'm younger than that. Now, he hit upon marriage vow, which is very good. He hit upon somehow, and then he somehow decided he needed to use the word bow, right? So he came up with this incredibly awkward phrase, confusion boats. And the only reason why he came up with that was to get to bow.
[00:42:02] Speaker A: I agree. I see your logic following.
[00:42:06] Speaker B: And to me, there are a few moments in the song like that, but that is the most egregious. So I like the song, but I think that the refrain I was so much older than does a lot of heavy lifting for some of the other moments in the song.
[00:42:24] Speaker A: So they're kind of like, look at this great refrain. Don't pay attention to this awkward forced rhyme.
[00:42:30] Speaker B: Exactly. And I'm 23 years old and I'm a poet.
[00:42:37] Speaker A: Yeah. And I'm the voice of a generation. So you will accept this without question.
[00:42:42] Speaker B: You will accept it. Exactly.
[00:42:44] Speaker A: And we have. So what's the most underrated song?
[00:42:48] Speaker B: Well, I would pick something more recent.
[00:42:52] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:42:53] Speaker B: I would know, even though I think a lot of people like it, I would say something like, mother of muses to me is a major Dylan song.
And I remember when the album first came out, I cried the first time I heard that song because it was so moving.
[00:43:16] Speaker A: Did you cry in DC when he did it? Because DC really moved me when he sang it.
[00:43:21] Speaker B: I probably did. I can't, like, I heard him do it last night, so that's what is reverberating in my brain.
[00:43:32] Speaker A: Jealous.
[00:43:35] Speaker B: And he did it so sublimely last night. It really has become the vocal highlight of the recent tour of the new shows. But I remember when it came out, I remember reading, like, on the expecting rain discussion board, there would be polls. What is your least favorite song? And a lot of people cited that one, which I thought was insane, because that's surprising.
[00:44:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:44:02] Speaker B: For me, it was one of the big four. For me, it was like, from the very beginning, I made up my mind to give myself to you, mother amuses, key west and murder most foul. Those were the big four for me. And that really has not changed since the album came out. The other songs, and I like all of them, by the way, like, the order has probably changed, but those four are the top for me. And what really moved me about that song was hearing him pray for inspiration.
He's praying to the muses, saying, I'm at the end of my life.
I'm almost out of here, and yet I'm not ready to go yet. Please give me more inspiration so I can do more. And that's what got me. I remember crying the first time I heard it because there are two lines. One is, I've already outlived my life by far. When I heard that, I lost it because he is singing about his mortality. He's saying, I really shouldn't be here.
It's like Daniel Landois said at one point that he feels like Dylan has lived several lifetimes. And that, to me, is Dylan kind of acknowledging, yeah, I'm in extra innings here.
And then that also kind of rhymes with the very end of the song where he sings, I'm traveling light, but I'm slow coming home.
And again, I immediately thought of the phrase coming home as referring to his death, which I don't think a lot of people see it that way. I mean, I know a lot of people think it's a reference to Leonard Cohen, which I think is valid. But I also know I had read the book why Bob Dylan matters by Richard Thomas. Have you read of the. I love that. You know, one of the things Richard Thomas talks about is Dylan sees himself as odysseus transfigured. And I loved that because, in a way, that's kind of what the never ending tour is. It's Dylan on this tour that's only going to end with his death.
And after I read that book, and by the way, I'm convinced Dylan read it, too. And that that actually did influence how he wrote some of the songs on rough and rowdy ways.
[00:46:44] Speaker A: I cannot prove you wrong yeah.
[00:46:46] Speaker B: I mean, we'll never know for sure, but the fact that the references to ancient Greece became so much more explicit, I think there's a chance I started to notice after I read that book that Dylan sings about the idea of going home a lot. And home. The word home seems to be kind of a metaphor for heaven in his more recent work. And that's not only in terms of the songs, but also in the no direction home documentary. The very first thing he says is, very far from where I'm supposed to be. So I'm on my way home. That's how the film begins. That's a bizarre thing to say, aaron.
I was born far from where I'm supposed to be. So I'm on my way home. And then I think I started to notice in Highlands, he sings, my heart's in the highlands. Wherever I roam that's where I'll be when I get called home. He's saying, I'll be in the Highlands when I die.
[00:48:00] Speaker A: But he sold his house there.
[00:48:03] Speaker B: He sold it, right? Yeah, because he's not ready.
[00:48:07] Speaker A: He's not ready. You just gave me a spark of hope.
[00:48:12] Speaker B: And then on Tempest, one of my favorite songs, he sings about all the lords and ladies heading for their eternal home.
And so that all kind of, I think, informed how I heard that last line of mother of muses, and it just hit me like a ton of bricks.
He's saying, I'm traveling light. I'm still on this journey, but I'm not ready to leave just yet. I'm slow leaving this world.
[00:48:47] Speaker A: That's amazing. And it kind of goes with too, pairing that with what you said about I made up my mind to give myself to you being lost in the stars, in that contemplation of the celestial plane where we all imagine we look up to the sky for heaven, and he's just sort of sitting there on the terrace in the terrestrial world, in the physical world, thinking about the celestial space.
[00:49:11] Speaker B: Exactly. And that's kind of the genius of rough and rowdy ways. Right. It's about his life and his death and his place in history.
That, to me, is the genius of the album. He's contemplating his place in the lineage of art throughout history, which is why I see.
[00:49:36] Speaker A: So I responded to false prophet right away because I do love the wicked messenger.
And he was told but these few words which opened up his heart. If you can't bring good news, don't bring any. And he says, I know how it happened. I saw it begin. I opened my heart to the world and the world came in. And I'm like, he's telling us at his old age what he couldn't tell us when he was 26 years old, and just listen to everything he says because he's saying, I'm not a false prophet, where the wicked messenger kind of is. And so it blew my mind.
[00:50:10] Speaker B: Yeah, I totally agree. By the way, I loved your interview on Pod Dylan, where you talked about.
[00:50:16] Speaker A: Yeah, I love that.
[00:50:21] Speaker B: Yeah. In particular, I loved it when Rob said that he found the harmonica to shrill, and you immediately said, well, maybe that's the message that people don't want to hear.
But you're right. I think there is a relationship there between wicked messenger and false prophet. And the thing is, in a weird way, rough and rowdy ways is his most autobiographical album. I mean, it's not autobiographical in the sense that, oh, he's going to tell you about his wife or whatever, or whatever's happening in his day to day life. But in terms of his feelings about himself as an artist and how he sees himself and his art functioning in the world, he is nakedly honest on the new album in a way that he's not.
[00:51:14] Speaker A: Prior to this one, Nina Goss did some really good stuff at World of Dylan this past May, and also she has a little bit in the set list book that we're doing that she's talking about how he's in this privileged position of being a later stage artist, and he's able to contemplate his earlier works, but also contemplate where he is, and he can manage his legacy and the legacy of his creative output. And that's exactly what you're saying right now, is that we see he's consciously doing that with rough and rowdy ways. And he's telling us as an 80 year old man because he was at least two years younger or 79, eightyear old man, this is where he is. And with his creativity and his contemplations of mortality and yeah, it is very raw and very naked in many ways.
[00:52:07] Speaker B: And it's kind of amazing that he can still do it after winning the Nobel Prize in literature. Right. Because you think that the pressure, but I don't think he really cares.
If anything, it might be more liberating for him. He kind of knows that everything he does is going to be scrutinized.
He's been used to that for a long time.
[00:52:32] Speaker A: Right.
[00:52:32] Speaker B: But the other thing I love about rough and rowdy ways, because I also think you can't understand that album unless you see it as a response to the know in many ways. But the other Dylan work that I think Ruffin Rowdy ways rhymes with is masked and anonymous, believe it or not. Because that is also a work where he's saying, where I think it's autobiographical, he's saying, this is what it feels like to be me.
These are the expectations that people are placing on me. They think of me as the voice of a generation. I'm always being asked to appear on television to do benefit concerts. And the difference is, I think masked and anonymous, which, by the way, I think is a great movie.
I think it's a very bleak film. I think it's very pessimistic. And I think he's kind of saying, I'm just an entertainer. And I think he's saying, like he literally says at the end of the movie, maybe I was just a singer and no more than that.
And I think it's kind of a pessimistic view of the power of art to change anything. I think he's basically saying, I can perform on television, I can sing my.
[00:54:07] Speaker A: Songs, but the coup is going to happen.
[00:54:10] Speaker B: It's going to happen anyway. Yeah, it's like whatever world powers are going to do, they're going to do.
And I don't think art can affect social change in a meaningful way. I'm just an entertainer. That's kind of the point of that film. And then what I love about rough and rowdy ways is I feel like he's kind of revised that position because I think he's saying wait a minute. I've won the Nobel Prize in literature, motherfuckers. And what I've done is going to stick around forever?
Just like the ancient poets, their work is still around.
And people need art. People turn to art in times of comfort.
Rough and Roddy ways, he gave that.
[00:55:06] Speaker A: To us during the pandemic.
[00:55:09] Speaker B: And that's the thing. His timing, which, of course, was not intentional, it was perfect. It was perfect. And that album ended up giving us comfort. And yet, when you listen to murder most foul, it's a song about people turning to the radio for comfort in the wake of the JFK assassination.
If rough and rowdy ways is the last album, which I hope it's not, I hope there will be at least one more.
It really would be a fitting final album because it's so beautiful.
The song Key west is so gentle.
It's just so affirming, even though, in my opinion, it's about death.
And it's the sound of the song that is comforting. It's the sound of the drums.
It just chugs along so gently.
The rhythm of it is so comforting. The accordion, I always say, is like a warm Florida breeze. And yet he's singing about death and transitioning from this world into the next.
Feel like I feel know. Tempest Aaron. That's an album I also love. I think it's one of his best. But it's really dark and it's really bloody.
It's his darkest, bloodiest, most violent album.
But in a way, it's the flip side of rough and rowdy ways.
They both have, I would say, the deepest engagement with history.
They're about history explicitly going all the way back. Ancient Greece, ancient Rome, as well as more recent history, historical tragedy, the sinking of the Titanic, the assassination of know.
But. But rough and rowdy ways is like the know flip side.
[00:57:22] Speaker A: Yeah, I can see that. So will you tell us what you're currently working? Tell me. I'm saying us and the greater, larger audience of the people who listen. I'm optimistic. But what are you currently working on, Dylan or non Dylan related?
[00:57:40] Speaker B: Well, I hope to shoot a new film in January.
[00:57:44] Speaker A: That's exciting.
[00:57:46] Speaker B: It is exciting, yes. So there will be Dylan references in the film for the faithful to recognize.
[00:57:57] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:57:58] Speaker B: So I hope that'll happen. But it's a question of, can I raise the money?
[00:58:05] Speaker A: I have a good lead filmmaker. Yes, that's a challenge.
[00:58:09] Speaker B: It's always a challenge.
And I have a verbal commitment from an investor, but I never trust it until the money's in the bank. So keep your fingers crossed.
[00:58:20] Speaker A: I'm sending you all the bonus karma.
[00:58:24] Speaker B: But I will say I think Dylan is more inspirational to me as an artist than any love. And I'm obsessed with cinema and film history. But there's something about the way Dylan has conducted his entire career that I think is know in the sense that you feel like he only does what he wants to do regardless of what other people expect. And that, to me, is what makes me want to keep creating.
[00:59:06] Speaker A: Isn't that his quote, a man is free if he gets up every morning and does what he wants to do?
[00:59:11] Speaker B: Yes, exactly.
You go to bed at night, you get up in the morning, and in between you do what you want to do.
But it's hard because so many people have expectations for what you should do. And when you go and see Dylan live now, he's singing mostly songs from his new album, and therefore, intentionally, not even intentionally, but he's alienating part of his fan base just by doing that.
[00:59:45] Speaker A: Well, the people next to me, I don't know what night it was. They got up and it was Saturday night because they left before trucking, and I was already appalled that they got up and left.
[01:00:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:00:02] Speaker A: But I could tell it wasn't their vibe, just by their energy that this was like, I think that they were coming to sort of stare at him and not really experience.
[01:00:13] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:00:15] Speaker A: One of the other nights I was walking out and every show, you know, every show you go to, someone's like, well, he didn't play those songs. And those are the songs that made him famous. Then they're listing off songs from. And you're like, even if he sang them, he's not going to sing them how you want to hear them.
[01:00:31] Speaker B: Right?
[01:00:32] Speaker A: Exactly.
[01:00:35] Speaker B: That's so admirable. That's so admirable. To me, every other performer cares so much about ingratiating themselves to the audience. And because Dylan doesn't do that, unfortunately, some people interpret that as indifference on his part. And that's what I find hard to hear because I don't care if people don't like what he does. But when they assume that he doesn't care, that's when I think, okay, now you're turning into an amateur psychologist, and you're wrong, because he's having a know. It's like if you are close enough to see his face, you can see how much fun he's know. When I was in the fourth row in Chicago, he is so animated. He is, um, he's so playful and mischievous, and he's so full of energy.
But he wants all of that to come through in the music. He's not going to give you empty platitudes about between song powder and how's it going tonight, Cincinnati, which is what other performers do. He's not going to do that. He wants the performances to do the talking.
[01:02:01] Speaker A: He did that where in his last shows rather than give us that Wikipedia banter like, oh, foggy bottom at the moment I loved. But now that I know he's doing city themed songs, I prefer the songs.
[01:02:20] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:02:21] Speaker A: And that's his banter is like. It's just this love language that he's prepared this beautiful song for us to listen to that is rooted to the city that he's in. And people went nuts. Born in Chicago blew the lid off.
[01:02:37] Speaker B: The did you know? Everybody lost their minds when he born in Chicago. And some people are now assuming that this is a farewell tour, rough and rally way for that reason. Because he's never. Well, I mean, he's never been this specific with the region centric song.
I saw him do a John Mellon camp song last night in Indiana and people lost their minds. And I do understand.
I doubt that in his mind it's the last tour, but when you're 82, you probably are aware of the fact that it might be the last time you play anywhere.
So I think that is his attitude probably is. I don't know how many more times I can do this. So therefore, this is my gift to.
[01:03:33] Speaker A: It's very. It's a generous know, as Roberta says, he's incredibly generous to us. And I'll take.
I kind of. I wonder if he's going to do Springsteen in.
[01:03:47] Speaker B: You know, prior to last night, I would have said no, but now it's like, if you're doing Mellon camp in Indiana, you kind of have to do.
[01:03:57] Speaker A: Unless he does know, it could happen. But yeah, I didn't think of him doing Sinatra until you said Mellon camp, too. So we're in the same wavelength.
[01:04:10] Speaker B: I mean, the great thing about Dylan is, like, anything is possible.
Prior to this leg of the tour, when he did the Farmaid show with the Heartbreakers, that was know. It's like nobody but Dylan among artists of his stature and of that generation, nobody has the power to surprise their fans the way that he does. And he does it over and over.
Like, I'm looking forward to each new set list because I feel like anything is possible.
[01:04:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
So that's a good segue into what other music do you listen to and how does it relate to Dylan's music?
[01:05:00] Speaker B: Well, I like to think of myself as a pretty adventurous listener.
I listen to some new music. I mean, I'm 48 years old now. I don't listen to as much new music as I used to in my youth. But I love big thief. I think they're a great band. Their last album, Dragon new warm Mountain, I believe in you, I think is fantastic.
I like Lana Del Rey a whole lot. I think she's an amazing songwriter and a very sort of Dylan esque figure in a lot of ways.
I like wiseblood a lot, who I think is a really great singer songwriter.
But most of the time now, I listen to music from the early to mid 20th century, and I think that relates to Dylan because I listened to a lot of the music that influenced him. And I think one of the great things about being a Dylan fan is he has been very aggressive about pointing the way back to his roots and his influences. And it's almost like he's kind of like the secret key that kind of unlocks the history of american music.
And this is what's great about other Dylan fans. It's like, you can't really be a Dylan fan unless you're also a fan of american music in general.
[01:06:31] Speaker A: Right. The roots music that just makes.
And it's so varied and so beautiful that we get jazz from that, and blues and country and bluegrass.
Yeah. All of those things that Dylan has weaved into his own canon.
And I agree with you. We go back and like, oh, that's interesting. So I do a thing with my students where I ask them, of course, the first day of class, I played Cripple Creek because Robbie had just died. And I said, ok, that's my song. And I talked about why I picked it. I said, so you're going to pick. The students say you pick a song next time, email me the link and then tell us about it. And so today, one of my students picked the Arctic Monkeys doing baby on yours. And I'm like, come on, man, now we have to talk about that. This is not their song, right?
[01:07:28] Speaker B: Did they know?
[01:07:30] Speaker A: He just liked. And I was like, all right, well, I need you to look it up. So I was like, I'll give you five minutes. And he did a quick Google search. And then he was like, that's.
[01:07:42] Speaker B: Good. You're a good teacher, because you turned that into a teachable moment.
[01:07:47] Speaker A: I hope so. Or I just humored myself.
[01:07:51] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I don't know what it mean. I've always been. I've always kind of had a voracious appetite for know. So it's like, even when I was young and I would hear Dylan cover a song that would lead me know, to the. Wait, wait, who did this?
Know? So that's how I got into blind Willie McTell and Robert Johnson and Williams and so much of the music that.
[01:08:22] Speaker A: Is sort of. You're right. He's the key. He's opened the door for you to know there's all this great stuff behind you or behind me. That's wonderful. All right, so my last question before anything else you'd like to share is, what is your favorite Bob Dylan memory?
I love that face. People can't see your face, but that was great.
[01:08:48] Speaker B: My favorite Bob Dylan memory.
You know what it was? I'll have to say it was 1999, seeing him at the park west in Chicago, which only holds a few hundred people. It's as small of a club as he has played in recent decades.
[01:09:10] Speaker A: Nice.
[01:09:10] Speaker B: That was the first time where I was close enough to see his blue eyes.
I was up against the stage, which, by the way, is low. It was about where my waist is, right? So that was the first time, even though I had been seeing shows for a decade, where I could see everything that was happening on stage.
[01:09:35] Speaker A: That is so cool.
[01:09:36] Speaker B: And it was a game changer, because that's when I said, okay, I need to do this as much as I possibly can. Like, I need to go to as many shows as I can. And so beginning the next year, that's when I started actually traveling a little further from home to go see shows. And he was in a really playful mood that night. I've told this story before, but he actually high fived someone in the front row.
[01:10:10] Speaker A: You can't see my face. I'm shocked.
[01:10:13] Speaker B: Yeah, he high fived someone in the front row. And he also made the funniest joke because keep in mind, 1999 was kind of before the Internet, right?
[01:10:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:10:25] Speaker B: Someone very close to me was writing down the set list on a piece of paper. Like, every time he would play a song, they would write it down.
[01:10:33] Speaker A: Oh, the good old days.
[01:10:35] Speaker B: The good old days. Yeah. Because you thought, like, if I don't write it down, it might be lost to the sands of time.
And he said to this person, Aaron, he said, are you writing a check for me? How much are you making it for?
[01:10:53] Speaker A: That's awesome.
[01:10:54] Speaker B: So that was just hilarious and amazing.
[01:10:59] Speaker A: Yeah, that would be my favorite memory, too.
[01:11:03] Speaker B: But then the performance itself was great. He did visions of Johanna and blind Willie Mctel, and he did a cover of the Stanley Brothers stone walls. And steel bars and to experience all of that in that intimate environment, it really did change my life.
[01:11:21] Speaker A: That's as close to having a personal show as you probably could get from Dylan. Yeah, that's pretty cool. And there's no way he didn't see you, because you're super tall and you're right at the stage. And so I'm sure he saw you.
[01:11:34] Speaker B: He probably did. But he did. I mean, I remember making eye contact with him, and that was an incredibly nerve wracking feeling, budy holly moment. Yeah. He looked into my eyes. I definitely did feel that. And it's weird. It's a weird feeling.
[01:11:58] Speaker A: That's crazy.
[01:11:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:12:00] Speaker A: Oh, I love that. Thank you so much for sharing that. So, anything else you'd like to talk about or share before we say goodnight?
[01:12:09] Speaker B: Not really. This has been really delightful. I've enjoyed just kind of riffing around.
[01:12:16] Speaker A: I'm so grateful to you for sharing everything that you did and your expertise on film and giving us an alternative interpretation of Ronaldo and.
[01:12:27] Speaker B: People, more people need to see it. And like I said, I hope it comes out in good quality.
[01:12:33] Speaker A: I do, too.
Well, thank you so much, Michael, for your time and for doing this on a Monday night.
And yeah, I could sit here and talk with you all the rest of the night about Bob Dylan. We need to get some more of our friends in here, but I'm going to stop recording, which David always leaves in.
[01:12:58] Speaker B: Thank you for listening to the Dillon Tantes podcast. Be sure to subscribe to, have the Dillon taunts sent directly to your inbox and share the Dillon taunts on social media.
